Hanoi

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Like Ho Chi Minh, the transfers from the airport allowed us to book some tours and after loving the city tour of the old Saigon, we booked another one. Our tour guide this time was a young guy called Dung, who was a wealth of information and didn’t try to kill Chris at every turn haha.
Bright and early we were collected for our day trip to Halong Bay, a three hour drive through some of the poorest towns and villages I have ever seen, reminded me how fortunate we are in Australia and while we spend our money taking advantage of the poverty that occurs throughout the world, there are people struggling to survive, looking at us in envy. Getting to Halong Bay was breathtaking and as we headed to our junket, who should we come across but our friends from our Ho Chi Minh tours, Ian and Jan, what are the odds? The cruise through Halong Bay delivers some beautiful scenary, must like the islands of Thailand if you are trying to imagine it. Definitely a worthwhile experience.
If there is one thing I can say about Hanoi airport that you remember, TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE KFC! After hearing our plane was delayed an hour, we felt pretty lucky that we had received free lunch vouchers. I must say I was overly convinced though and tried to pull Chris to the KFC that greets you before you pass through immigration. My pleas weren’t successful and we went to pass through Immigration before getting our free lunch. I’d taken 2 steps inside when we were stopped and asked to weigh our carry on luggage. Uh Oh. I knew full well mine was heavy but thinking we were allowed 10kgs, thought there wouldn’t be a problem. No, Malaysia airlines only allows 5kgs carry-on and we were going to have to check our luggage in. In the midst of fighting this, 3 Malaysian ladies were also stopped and told the same thing. After spending 5mins argueing with her, we finally managed to get a supervisor to come see us and after some argueing with him, we were waved through. Feeling disgruntled, we headed up to collect our free lunch. A dog meat hot dog! The rate at which both our bodies rejected this, makes me confident in saying it was dog meat. Unfortunately Hanoir airport offers nothing else in the way of food either so we were stuck until we got on the plane. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE KFC!

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